


Tones on Tale

by paceisthetrick



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:43:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paceisthetrick/pseuds/paceisthetrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An expansion of Olivia's backstory</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tones on Tale

There were those who whispered after seeing it when she was born.

The sign of the Devil Himself.

As she grew the rumors grew disproportionately. It was said that it was not a witch’s teat but a tail!

A tail like that of Lucifer Himself!

She was a plain child with a strikingly beautiful mother and sister. Another sign!

Everyone knows witches are hideous.

Of this the child was blissfully ignorant, protected from the fearful villagers by the high wall surrounding her father’s estate.

Once they rose up and descended with pitchforks and torches but the Prince’s soldiers suppressed the riot and it was explained to her as a socioeconomic problem.

She came to fear the lower orders like all proper aristocratic girls.

Her mother told her the tail made her special and recounted the fable of the wolf twins who built the Roman Empire and ruled for a thousand years. That such stories are embellished for posterity was lost on the impressionable child. Thinking as all children do, she vowed to have her own Roman to rule for a thousand years.

There were no men in her life save the elderly servants. Her delicacy dictated that she remain alone for life. For what honorable man would bed a tail?

Her rescue and downfall came in the form of the serf boy, Dimitri, purchased for a king’s fortune. He was a conniver who shirked his labors and instead spent his time waiting on the little girls. Yelena wished to tell on him but Olivia sat in raptures, entertained by his lore and dazzled by his gypsy charm and forbad her sister to do any such thing. He told them of magic and fortunes and evil deep in the earth. He taught them to cast coins and see in the mirror and speak to the wolves in their own tongue. He could read the stars and the palm of a hand and navigate earth and sea without a compass. He had traveled far in his few years and seen the Infidel and the Order of the Dragon.

He had no religion.

He spoke of an elixir for immortality and of the necuratu, the unclean spirits, but to Olivia alone he told this. He knew of her tail but of this he did not speak, saying instead that certain signs at birth, cauls and other rarities, signified the other path but this path the soul must choose.

He spoke of romantic love, gypsy love, condemned by those who would bargain their daughter away for silver coins. And in so saying he lied abominably for a gypsy will marry his infant child away for a chicken.

Of course she believed him, foolish foolish child whose parents failed her so. She left with him in the night and spread her legs on the cold ground to receive his demon seed.

And when she awoke she was alone.

For a gypsy is a gypsy is a gypsy. He will steal the rings from your fingers and the love from your heart.

She pledged herself then and there to the Devil, speaking the ancient incantations and vowing revenge. With her own hand she cut off the tail to hide herself. For what man would bed a tail?

The child Magdelena, the product of that unfortunate event, was given to the swineherd as befitted the blood of a serf.

And what of the girl Olivia? She went to the city to learn the dramatic arts.

The better to entice others.

The gypsy Dimitri had taught her well.


End file.
